When I'm Dead

On a cold October night in Black Harbor, Wisconsin, medical examiner Rowan Winthorp is called to the death of a teenage girl and recognizes the victim: Madison Caldwell, her daughter's best friend. Hours later the case stops being professional. Rowan's daughter Chloe never comes home from her school play, and the police begin to treat her less as a missing girl than as a suspect.

When a second classmate is killed, it becomes clear that someone is working through Chloe's circle. Rowan and her husband, an investigator on the case, are forced to reconstruct a daughter they are no longer sure they knew — the rumours that followed her, the adults in her life, the things she never said at home.

Hannah Morrissey's third Black Harbor novel keeps the series' bleak, snowbound atmosphere and its interest in what police work costs the people who do it. The mystery stands on its own, though returning readers will recognize the town and several of its investigators.